Posted
by
timothy
on Monday March 07, 2005 @02:30PM
from the convert-them-into-aquanauts dept.

Abhishek writes "According to a Space.com report, Astronauts at NASA fear that they won't be able to fly until 2015 and that, for some, would be too late. The space shuttles that NASA have are almost at the end of their lifetimes and any shuttle can take years to be built. Though almost everybody is involved in some way or another in looking after a shuttle, only a lucky few actually gets the chance for a ride."

Most of them have other jobs at NASA when not in prep for a flight, such as running a lab, program manager for a particular system, performing various analyses or engineering work, etc., plus all the PR (trips to schools, educational programs). Basically their technical/leaderhship skills are used within the program.

Well, if they want to go into space they can always take one of the new private rides which will probably get them there faster than 2015, though not for as long a stay.

"Burning fuel to carry all that weight to the edge of the atmosphere when you can fly it to the edge of the sky and launch it from there is pretty dumb..."

Getting into space is more complex than flying an airplane up to 63 miles and jumping out. To go into orbit you need to achieve a speed of about Mach 25 (Spaceship 1 was nowhere even close to orbital velocity). Rocket technologies today make sense in accomplishing this by minimizing the weight of the spacecraft and maximizing the weight of the fuel. To do what you want would require that almost all of the fuel and useful spacecraft are carried in an aircraft to perhaps 100,000 feet. The fuel to do so would be enormous and you would still have to fire the rocket to get the other Mach 24 or so. The complex airoframe required to pull this off would probably require a significantly larger amount of fuel that is used today. The losses a rocket has from atmospheric drag at high velocities (up to about 100,000 feet to be equivalent) would be vastly smaller than the fuel required to launch a standard airplane assisted rocket launch.

On a side note, a scramjet may be useful in the future due to its small engine size (extremely few parts). In this scenario a rocket would launch from the ground up to Mach 1, the scramjet would accelerate up to Mach 15, and then another rocket would accelarate up to Mach 25 for orbit or escape. Considering that no space launch has ever used a scramjet, I don't think its fair to call existing technologies 'dumb'. But then again, when has anyone considered 'rocket scientist' to be a synonymn for 'intelligent engineer'?

What the parent needs to realize is how tough it is to scale up rockets to orbital, because you have to invest more and more of your energy into accelerating your fuel. It is quite possible, in theory, to get a moderate cargo to orbit from air launch (tow-launch, drop-launch, or carry-launch) if you use very high ISP engines and a very low mass craft. However, if you don't, your ability to just drop from an aircraft quickly becomes untenable; even a Cossack couldn't carry, say, a scaled-up SpaceShipOne.

The real benefit from air launch, BTW, is not the altitude, but the fact that you don't have to plow through the atmosphere as much and don't have the problems associated with having your engines firing right near the ground (which is more likely to damage them). And ramjets would be great; unfortunately, we cancelled the program because of the premature Mars mission spending:P We need a good workhorse before we commit those kinds of resources to Mars.

And ramjets would be great; unfortunately, we cancelled the program because of the premature Mars mission spending

Err... no. The program was cancelled because scramjets are useless for launching cargo into orbit. The problem is, as you pointed out earlier in your post, the majority of the energy you need to get to orbit is in the "horizontal" direction. Most orbital flight profiles expend only 10% of energy getting into space and 90% gathering enough speed for orbit.

My cousin got offered a place is the Space Program. He choose to design satelittes rather than the astronaut position. (Better money, and he later went to the private sector. Obviously he is not a geek...:)
These are highly trained and educated individuals, I am sure they being employed gainfully...

"Although flying in space is the highlight of an astronaut's career, little time is actually spent in orbit. In fact, during a 10- year assignment with NASA, an astronaut will probably fly in space only three times. There is much more to being an astronaut than time spent in orbit. An astronaut's ground duties can be broken down into two major categories: training for space flight and serving as a technical expert in some portion of the space shuttle or space station programs. "

Yes, I'm sure you'd be saying "Thank God for space debris" if you were one of the family members of the crew who died. It certainly was convenient for them to die to save you some money.

Oh, wait, did it save you money? Let's look at this... $600,000,000 to launch (I'll take your number because I'm too lazy to look it up). There are about 100,000,000 taxpayers in this country, so assuming two launches per year, you have saved yourself $12/year. Go buy that new car you've been lusting over with that. 12 fucking dollars, man, and you are bitching! Maybe buying two subs from Subway is more important than a bunch of scientific research, but we won't debate that. The annual budget of NASA is 16 billion, which comes out to $160/year/taxpayer for EVERYTHING they do (satellites, mars missions, aerodynamics research, plasma physics, etc). The WEEKLY budget of the Iraq war is 5 billion, and that is just the Iraq war not all of the defense dept.

Even if you'd rather save the $12/year to not launch, did you even think what it costs to research the failure and fix the issues? The return to flight costs were around 1.2 billion (that included all the research into the accident and all the new testing and procedure development). They haven't launched in two years and only had three launches planned in that time, so you saved all of $3/year. Woooooo!

And astronauts have real jobs when they aren't flying. Some are doctors, some are plasma physicists, some are just normal engineers doing research. They aren't always training for a new mission; they are using their single paycheck to do a normal engineering job until it is time to train and fly.

That argument can be made on most government programs. "Dammnit, why not spend $10 per tax on [insert pet cause here]. It's really nothing!"

Course, what if I give you your $10 bucks for space jaunting, are you going to give me my $10 to research a cure for MS or Lupus, or are you going to start raging about liberals and their damn tax and spend ways?

Now that would be an interesting form of democracy. You vote for politicians to come up with different programs, and then each person gets to vote for where their tax dollars go: a bit like allocating where your 401K money gets invested. The gun nuts can have their tax dollars go to the military, the geeks can have their tax dollars go towards NASA, and the hippies can have their tax dollars go towards environmental protection.

I imagined that there would be a lot of boring, yet essential for a smoothly running country, items that would be almost ignored under such a system.

I don't know why people forget that there are businesses in his country that also pay taxes.

Of course, "businesses" don't pay taxes, only people do. Corporate taxes must necessarily be paid by some combination of increased prices to consumers, decreased wages to employees, or lower returns to shareholders.

Buzz Aldrin: Sir, please make sure your tray table and seat is returned to its upright position.Passenger: No! Where the hell's that beer I ordered???Neil Armstrong: It won't be a minute, sir. I just need to make one giant leap to reach the cupboard where the beers are.

...is that there isn't much need for Astronauts in our new service-based economy, so they're gonna have a hell of a time finding a new job

Well, then there hasn't been a need ever, if that's how you look at it. But try this instead: these are some of the smartest, most physically and intellectually hardy, well-rounded people on the planet. Every one of them is better equipped to teach than most teachers, better able to fly than most pilots, better able to handle stress than most soldiers/firefighters/police, better able to understand and work with complex systems than most engineers... somehow I think that someone with those skills is hardly going to be working at, well, Disney's Space Mountain ride. There are plenty of systems engineers I know making six figures that would love to have one of these folks as a boss. Just the aerospace defense area alone could gobble up the entire astronaut-trained team in any one month's hiring cycle.

Now... does holding analysis review meetings quite measure up to flying to the moon? No. Does grading orbital mechanics term papers have quite the same panache as shrieking into LEO with a billion dollar payload? No. Is my job boring? Most of the time. They'll deal with it just fine.

...is that there isn't much need for Astronauts in our new service-based economy, so they're gonna have a hell of a time finding a new job.

India and China are expanding their space program. Maybe they can become visa astronauts (B1H?). With all the damned visa workers India sends over here, at least give our astronauts some reciprical opportunities.

It's rather ironic I think. NASA does things "rigoursly" in the name of safety, but in the end I think safety is compromised because systems are so complex. No one person can have a high level view of such as system.

My point is they get so mired down in doing everything "by the book" and overspecing everthing 3000% that they actually DECREASE safety by making things overly complex and adding new failure modes that wouldn't exist in a simpler system.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that NASA is a research organization, not a space cargo organization. Most of their budget generally goes to new research. Even a sizable chunk of the shuttle's budget (from which that 13k$-15k$ per kilogram number comes from, compared to 10k$ for Ariane-5 and 7k$ for Proton and Long March (although they get the benefit of cheap labor)) goes to research on how to lower maintenance costs and improve performance of reusable craft. The shuttle itself was really a research craft; you might have noticed that most of NASA's manned space program craft have been designed to try and push the envelope. If you want a cargo workhorse, use a Delta or Atlas, or go overseas.

As an example of how much research NASA does, just take a look at how many papers there are on NASA's site that just contain the word "novel" [google.com].

Yes, because there were SO many existing ways to keep a glider from going over MACH before Rutan built his craft. NOT. Rutan researched and designed a novel way to accomplish his goal and did so with a budget of only $20 million to research, design, test, and launch his craft three times. I'd say that's pretty damn good use of money and he even managed to do some R&D along the way =)

Keep it from going over mach? I hate to disappoint you, but SS1 *did* go over Mach 1. And, furthermore, there *are* lots of programs for simulating compressible and incompressible flows as you get accelerating through/decelerating from supersonic speeds. I can get you about half a dozen open source computational flow dynamics programs that can simulate a craft ahead of time if you'd like. And guess what? A good portion of them were originally developed by NASA;)

> Rutan researched

He did not research. He *developed*. You need to learn what research is. Rutan took already existing technology (much of which had its fundamentals laid out by NASA research), designed a craft, and built it. For comparison, I don't call it "research" when I write a program that utilizes Blowfish encryption; developing Blowfish encryption was the "research".:P

That the Rutan flight represents some sort of triumph of capitalism over big, bad, governemnt is laughable. In the first place, Rutan's project relies on 'space age' materials pretty much all of which were invented on the government's nickel. IF Rutan had to fund all of the basic research that culminated in SS-1, he would have been bankrupt in a week. Second of all, SS-1 is capable of putting a few hundred pounds barely into space. The 30 year old shuttle design can put 20 to 30 TONS [nasa.gov] into low earth orbit. D

There is always poverty, war and corruption. If you think throwing $10 billion or $100 billion at education will do anything to solve the problems you truly do not understand the causes. Social problems are insanely hard to fix using money alone or non-draconian laws.
If you care so much about education then why are you opposed to Nasa? Those $10 billion are probably well worth the interest they generate in science among children. Smaller classrooms are worth jack shit if children don't want to learn and t

Off you're quoted website
In the spaceship Vostok 1, Senior Lieutenant Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin orbited earth one time at an altitude of 187 3/4 miles (302 kilometers) for 108 minutes at 18,000 miles an hour

Spaceship one went to 100 kilometers, for 2 minutes? and went maybe a few hundred miles/hour. In other words not even close. NASA didn't do it, because theres no point.Is it a vital first step in a private space program, yes.Is it important to the worlds space program, no.

And people should note that the Pegasus costs *far more* per kg than the shuttle to orbit, and has far less capabilities (although, to be fair, it is a much smaller rocket, which makes it inherently less efficient)

I don't know why people around here just assume that Scaled can magically make everything cheaper and safer with space, when no space agency in the world and no private contractor has been able to. It's not like

And the genius of the Russian programme is that they took an engineers approach to the whole thing of "if it ain't broke don't fix it". So they built simple, and built to last. The mechanics are miles simpler, and are a major reason for the Russians keeping going despite budget reductions.

Maybe NASA should be made to concentrate on basic engineering rather than fancy shuttles.

Amen to this comment; the US military/space programs could do well to emulate the Russian design philosophy. Make things simple, rugged, and easily replaceable. I'm surprised Russia doesn't do more PR about how they are basically holding the ISS together.

Uh, first, we have to have private spacecraft. Burt Rutan's project is about at the level of the second Mercury flight, which was suborbital.

Not to mention 40 years in the past.

The private sector still has a lot of work to do before it can really play with the big boys (in this case, government space agencies). It will catch up, but it's kinda like saying you're ready to start carrying passengers between New York and Tokyo because you can fold a piece of paper and make it fly. You may have re-discovere

It's amazing how far we've come in the past 36 years. We were once going to the moon, now we can't even go to space! We need to get up there, no matter how we get there. Be it spaceshipone, or the shuttles, or something new.
What NASA really needs to do is stop canceling all the good ideas for vehicles. They'll let the planning and testing go on for 8+ years and then nothing comes out of it.

Although you are correct that it appears we are going in reverse, by not actually adopting new things, and not going to the moon or doing big missions (such as Mars.) NASA has been doing things.

Since the 70's, NASA's budget has not been the top issue (it has gone down steadily since we stopped going to the moon.) And we also no longer wanted to beat the Soviets in space (since we already did that.)

We still have the technology to go to the moon, and I would even hazard to guess the technology is there to go to Mars as well, but the money is not there.

And the testing money NASA is spending, well think about that as trying to get itself to Mars on a limited budget. If something will not work to accomplish NASA's probable main mission, why stick with it?

NASA has accomplished several smaller probe missions. But the fact is, that with such a smaller budget and the fact that we are still the main financier's for the international space station; NASA has issues with its budget right now. So, write to your congressman if you want to go out to Mars or goto the moon again, because right now its those people who decide whether we go or not. (Think oversight committee as well.)

"We still have the technology to go to the moon, and I would even hazard to guess the technology is there to go to Mars as well, but the money is not there."

I would argue to you that we have no WILL to go back to the Moon...or Mars...or anywhere else that requires putting men any farther than low orbit.

We know that no one else is likely going to another planet soon, so we go "What's the rush? Why spend the money now? It's not like anyone else is going". Doing it for science, and frankly, for history and a

Yes. We've lost 3 entire crews and risked the lives of others. Apparently, the missions do not justify the risks involved nowadays. NASA cannot afford to make another mistake so the costs can only go up while paranoid security measures and fear of doing something wrong make it harder to send anyone into space.

Besides, Joe Sixpack is entertained enough with the unmanned missions and the high-res pictures they send back. So why should the well-paid peopl

There goes my hopes of being the first man on Mars! I honestly think it'll be 50 years before we put a man on the red planet.. which really blows. Well, NASA won't make it happen until we axe the whole organization and rebuild it with young whipper-snappers ala the '60s. Hopefully Zubrin can convince a commercial outfit to go there.. perhaps Scaled Composites?

The answer is: Yes, we're supposed to feel some sympathy for people who spend their lives training for an extraordinary and meaningful experience, but who may not see their dream fulfilled. No, we're not supposed to be completely callous to their aspirations.

I'm a much bigger fanboy for robotic space exploration, and not much of an advocate of the shuttle program. (Nixon basically pimped the shuttle by exaggerating how cost effective it could be, in a spectacular example of how much government largesse the 'Publicans are capable of when the military industrial complex stands to benefit. IMHO, of course.) That doesn't keep me from sympathizing with astronauts who are, by all accounts, pretty impressive people.

That's shocking! I figured everyone at NASA took turns hopping on board and rocketing off to Saturn and back on weekends./sarcasmIs it REALLY part of the story that only a blessed few get to ride in the shuttle?

The point is that it's going to be hard to maintain a pool of qualified astronauts if they have no incentive to train for it because of no chance to actually go into space. You don't just pick these guys out a few months before launch.

They were thinking that the post Regan era slashing to their budget means that it's awfully hard to complete all of their mandates: scientific satelites, unmanned missions, manned mission using current (expensive to maintain) equipment, and designing and testing next generation equipment. Today the US uses the smallest percentage of their wealth for exploration of any large world power in history, heck even at the height of our spending on the Apollo program we barely matched what the Spanish did with Colum

With all their paid training they've received, they're perfect for landing jobs in the private sector. In the last year, we've seen a huge initiative for private ventures to go into space. Who better to be the vehicles' operators than existing astronauts? Throw in some stock options, and I think they'd do quite well for themselves. Richard Branson wouldn't hesitate to hire them, not just for their experience but also for the PR value it would have.

a) I actually doubt they could build another, like the Saturn V rocketsb) Much of the cost of building something like this is figuring how to build the parts to spec, and chances are, they don't have the tooling in place anymorec) The only thing the current shuttles have problem is that it is too complex and too costly to send on missions.

While politically impossible, it would be far cheaper to buy launches from the Russians to put these guys into space.

Do you really think that we lack the capability to make something that was made in the 1960s? Yes, there might be a large start up cost since many of the tools are no longer in use, but we also have technologies and automation that was unimagined in the 60s.

I have heard this argument time and again - we can't make the parts anymore, we don't know how. I am waving the BS flag on that. I challenge you, or anyone else, to point to a part used on the Saturn V rockets that can no longer be made. I am not saying that it can be made inexpensively or mass produced in a factory, but point to something that absolutley cannot be made.

Also, do you need something made to spec? What size? I'll measure it with my laser. Need to examine it for flaws? I can use my PC and a camera to look it over for you. Need an X-Ray of it? I can do the same thing. Need to check calculations? Forget your slide rule, I've got a TI-92.

In short, I doubt there is anything technologically impossible about creating more Saturn V rockets. I doubt there is even a financial reason it can't be done - NASA declaring they are spending billions to buy a new "fleet" of Saturn V rockets will motivate companies to produce what is needed for a reasonable cost (in most cases). What we really need is the political will to say this is important and we need to fund it.

Cost is probably most of it. But we'd have to fully recreate the original tooling to build one. Making a part of dimension xyz is only part of the problem. It also has to be of the same original material. Thermal expansion/contraction would play a big part in it. Part A & B need to work with part C. If C is built of a newer, better(?) alloy, that's not necessarily a good thing, if it expands at adifferent rate than the original...

Could we duplicate a 1972 Pinto? Not a look alike, with a better motor and suspension, but an actual duplicate 1972 Pinto. Sure. But at a cost of 5x the original. Finding that 5x is the problem.

Do you really think that we lack the capability to make something that was made in the 1960s?

We no longer have the plans, the infrustructure or the people with skills - the Saturn V was the culmination of years of work by people with years of experience. We could put one together in a few years after building all of that up - but don't expect the first one to be any good.

Also, do you need something made to spec? What size? I'll measure it with my laser.

We've had good enough length measuring devices for over a century, you'll find that where a laser is available micrometers are still used, and as for examining it for flaws "a PC and camera" won't do the job any better than back then. Industrial endescopes get you into hard to reach places, and ultrasonics has progressed a bit but still gives you no more info than 1960's x-rays.

Need to check calculations? Forget your slide rule, I've got a TI-92.

They had computers back then too - but the computer is a tool of the designer and cannont design anything itself. We can pull apart the example Saturn V and make replicas of the parts but unless we know exactly why they are designed that way it isn't worth doing - something will go wrong. When you build really big rockets the stresses on the very thin walls you need to stop the whole thing melting are immense - so it doesn't take much of a flaw to make the thing split. That's why the Russians use lots of little rockets clustered together instead of one big one, and why the shuttle has boosters instead of being on top of one really big rocket.

The postponement could be due to past fatalities that occurred, including the 2003 incident. Maybe NASA has to develop a new machine for flight.

1 February 2003; Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107), over northeast Texas: Columbia was in the re-entry phase of flight after a 16-day mission and its intended destination was the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Communications with the shuttle were lost at about 9 a.m. local time. At the time of the most catastrophic phase of the breakup, the spacecraft was at an a

When my fourth grade teacher asked me what I want to be when I grow up, I told her, "I want to be an ASTRONAUT Mrs. King". She told me I could do it, if I apply myself.
Never before have I been as grateful for chronic drug abuse and not living up to my potential as I am today.
It's not like the title says, "Network Tech's Face Bleak Odds for Hooking up Patch Cables"

Maybe they could jump ship and try for one of the proposed manned space programs in other countries. The pilots and engineers shouldn't have a problem finding jobs in the private sector as it begins to take off (no pun intended) since there will be a need for people who know how to get a hunk of metal moving at 7km/s on the ground in once piece. The scientists and other mission personal would have trouble finding spots in the private sector unless it becomes profitable. This would require something like fea

Odds are the Bigelow space prize [space.com] will be won well before 2015. That means a private space shuttle will be available for purchase. The best thing nasa can do is focus on scientific missions and provide a market for the contestant in that prize-instead of trying to compete against them.

I thought this was an odd article, my thinking that an "astronaut" who's never been to space would be an "astronaut wannabe", "astronaut in training" or the more pejorative: "space cadet". According to Websters just being "trained" makes you an astronaut.

" a person who travels beyond the earth's atmosphere; also : a trainee for spaceflight"

Gotta suck when you tell people you're an astronaut and people's first question is "When did you go up?". They probably have the Websters definition loophole printed on the back of their business cards.

Deke Slayton [nasa.gov], one of the Mercury Seven and the longtime head of the astronaut corps (i.e., the guy with the final say on flight crew assignments), pushed hard to use an airliner-style crew system for the shuttle. That is, have a small group of pilots and mission specialists that would fly repeatedly together, with one-off payload specialists handling mission-specific duties. He'd seen how frustrating life was for the later '60s astronaut classes that only saw a few members fly, and sometimes not for decades. And this was back when NASA genuinely believed each shuttle would spend as little as two weeks before launching again.

Instead, we got the worst of both words: A launch schedule in which four shuttles did at most a dozen launches a year together, little likelihood of even that annual figure in the three remaining shuttles' lifetimes, and an astronaut corps that numbers in the hundreds with new inductees coming in every two years. That's just crazy.

NASA's done this before. NASA's astronaut class of 1967, hired for the "Apollo Applications" program that didn't happen, called itself the Excess Eleven [astronautix.com]. Most of those guys quit or were laid off in the early 1970s.

When somebody mentions the shuttle program ending, I never miss a chance to plug nuclear rockets. I know it's the "N" word, but read this fascinating article [nuclearspace.com] detailing a design for a fully reusable, non-polluting rocket ship based on the Saturn-V form factor. Powered by Gas Core Nuclear Reactor engines emitting only non-radioactive hydrogen, the ship would be capable of carrying 1000 Tons of cargo into orbit and returning an equal amount of cargo to a powered landing. For comparison the shuttle's cargo capacity is less than 30 tons.

In the last 1960s, Al Bean had been assigned to the Apollo Applications project. He didn't expect to get into space for years, if ever. As it happened, his friend Pete Conrad needed someone to be LMP for Apollo 12, and knew Al was good and was working on long-term stuff that could wait. Al became the LMP for the flight, his first in space, and the 4th man to walk on the moon.

Everyone in the Astronaut training program is looking for their chance to jump the line and get wings, and you never know how might turn out to be the one to flip the critical switch for SCE to AUX and save the mission.

Bean later flew in space again as a Commander on the Apollo Applications mission that became Skylab.

I know that comment was supposed to be a crass and cynical joke. However, given we all are going to die anyway; who is luckier someone who just dies, or someone who dies while working towards a goal they believe is worthwhile?

I would think that they do/did consider themselves lucky. What is more exciting? Dying embarking on/returning from a mission to a completely foreign place experiencing something only a fraction of a fraction of people will ever experience or dying because a drunk driver hit you while crossing the street to get to the parking garage after 9 hours of sitting at a computer terminal?

You bet your ass the two dead crews would consider themselves lucky. They died doing something they loved.